


Burn up

by Anuna



Series: Monsters [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, PWP, Speculation, accepting who you are, and he is a monster by making, and when she does ward goes after her to protect her, but that doesn't mean they're all out of choices, emotional hurt comfort, even when that's something you never wanted to be, imaginary skyeward season 2, mature content, she is a monster by birth, skye rages, they're both monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 15:49:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1610696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anuna/pseuds/Anuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The drug she was given sets off a monster whose deadly rage stops only when her targets fall. If she kills, the rage would take over. That's why Ward never allows it to happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn up

**Author's Note:**

> This happened as a result of "Skye could be a monster/her 084-ness could be dangerous and triggered by rage"theories and discussions I shared with my tumblr friends (teruel-a-witch, I am looking at you). It's sort of an inverse Beauty and the Beast thing, where Ward and Skye deal with their respective darkness - and the only way to ultimately deal with it is not to run away from it, but to accept it as a part of who you are. I hope you enjoy it, I wanted to write it before it gets jossed tonight. 
> 
> Happy season finale and here's to the show which made me write two fics in two days - that didn't happen in a while. :D

He starts with her hands. And finishes with her hands. Always. And he's always so gentle and so careful like she's made of precious things. (She isn't.)

She stares, numb and cold and reeling in her head, waiting for the pounding in her mind to subside. It's detached, foreign, like something alien stretching fingers through her insides. Alien, she thinks, struggling with the cold that shouldn't feel good or safe. She was never alien to herself. 

Ward is quiet. He is always quiet when he does this. Dirt and blood and things she doesn't recognize, stuck in her hair or on her clothes; scars she doesn't remember receiving, scars disappearing only to leave blue tint behind. She dreads it, and hates it and checks her face and neck and chest in the mirror. It spreads. It doesn't. It goes away. Not really. 

“Almost done,” he says in hushed tone, that tone she always trusted and found reassuring and warm and everything wonderful. It's not, can't be, shouldn't be any more, but the world has slipped off its axis. There are so little familiar things left for her. 

Raina explained in no uncertain terms what would happen if she kills someone. The rage and the blue would take over. Shouldn't rage be red? She always imagined it so. Her hands looked bruised by the pain she didn't choose. Coulson said the alien was blue. She can still hear the gunshot. She still sees the body hitting the ground. When the target falls, the rage stops. She comes back to herself, to find Ward wiping her hands clean. _I am trying to protect you._ He didn't lie. 

It should have never been like this. Ward took blood on his hands to spare hers, but she feels it's still in vain. 

He doesn't let go of her hands when he's done. Her fingers are blue. The color spreads through her skin, like spiderweb, reaching the veins of her arms and disappearing into her. It's like a poison nobody can draw out. 

He keeps her hands in his. He has broad, warm palms. How can rough hands touch her so softly? It's so familiar, all so familiar, every fingernail and knuckle and every line on his palm, and she needs that. How he smells. How he sounds. She needs all of it. 

“Stop,” she says and pulls her hands away. And he does. He sighs. She wants to fight him, she wants to scream. “Why?” she asks, looking at the perpetual patient face, one she knows so well. 

“I'll bring you back,” he says. 

He didn't kill anyone, not for a long time. If he raided Hydra hideouts, they found prisoners, not dead bodies. If he went after her, he stunned her targets. (He asked Fitz for icers.) When they fall, so does her rage, and she feels its unfair that he can trick the beast inside of her, while she can't. 

“I don't want to go back,” she says. She doesn't want May's look full of sadness, the silence of Coulson's apology, the way Fitz and Simmons are still trying to find a way to fix her. She turns to Ward, standing next to the desk where he's packing his med – kit. Everything he needs whenever she runs away to wreak havoc somewhere else, not on her home. (She imagines Fitz calls him. She imagines he tells Coulson he'll bring her back. She remembers him carrying her back to the plane on one occasion. She hates this.) 

“Skye,” he starts. 

“I'm a monster,” she says, and the word doesn't do anything for her. It's like a terrible, worn out record – it refuses to destroy her and it refuses to leave. 

“You're not,” he says. Always the knight and never failing her, and sometimes she wants him to, she wants him to look at her and be horrified, but he never is. But when he does look at her – eyes big and _dark_ , she doesn't see the evil she projected onto him once. She sees broken. And she can't look away. 

“I am, Ward. I wake up at night and want to go and rip someone apart with my teeth,” she says into his face which doesn't change. He merely moves a strand of hair falling in front of her face. 

“That's not all you are,” he says. 

“It doesn't fucking matter. I can't trust myself. I can't control myself. I need _you_ to -” she says and stops because it's too hard. Because she never wants Coulson to see her like that, or May, or Fitz and Simmons, and _he knows it_. And it's not only her he's protecting. She feels her eyes sting. “You've _seen_ me, Grant.”

She waits for his answer but he doesn't say anything. There's compassion in his eyes and warmth, understanding and longing. The last one makes her breath catch. 

“You've seen me,” she says and moves her hair away. The side of her neck is blue, dark like an ugly bruise, a tangible proof. Everyone else looks away. He doesn't. 

“That's not all you are, Skye,” he says, reaching with his hand and moving her hair further. She feels the heel of his palm on the side of her neck and almost falls into the touch. It feels like someone has lit a fire inside her chest. 

She feels so cold. 

“There's more,” she says and opens a button of her shirt. He looks as she opens another and another. The sight that makes Jemma look down, that makes Fitz press his lips and try to hide his fear for her. But Ward looks, because she's broken, because he is as well, because he's not afraid of it. “Look,” she says and her voice breaks. 

He pulls her closer, gently so. Half of her shirt is hanging open and she isn't wearing anything underneath, but it doesn't matter because he _can_ look at her. 

“Can I?” he asks, with his fingers on another button and she nods. She feels him unbutton her all the way, but she doesn't see him any more because she's looking down at the familiar sight of his hands and his shirt still neatly tucked inside his jeans. She counts his breaths and tries to match her own, but she stumbles. She's shaking. Ward's hand reaches for her face, lifts it up by the chin to look at him. 

And he looks at her like she's something beautiful, something one could want. But instead of anger her frustration slips down her face in shape of tears; hot and stinging. “I'm a monster,” she repeats brokenly. 

“So am I,” he says and it feels like a punch when he does. She still remembers all the things she told him, and his thin excuses, and yet his words slam into her chest. “I didn't choose to be one and neither did you,” his voice is serious and his eyes determined. “But you taught me that there is a choice and there is always a choice.”

“What kind of choice do you think I have?” she asks, barely, afraid of what he's going to say. 

“You can't cut that thing out of you,” he says. “I'm a killer. I know how to do it. I _can_ do it. And that's not going away, just like your blood won't. Like the killer in me won't go. But what I can do is accept that I am what I am,” he says and cups her face in his hands like he did on the plane once. That time she didn't want to see him, didn't want to hear him and let him convince her that anything. “And what I can accept can't hurt me,” he finishes in a whisper. 

“It doesn't work like that, Ward,” she says. 

“Did you try it?” he asks her. Skye shakes her head, placing a hand above his heart. “You've tried to run away,” he says warmly. “Did that work?”

“No,” she says, leaning forward and into his warmth. He rubs her arms and it feels so good, so good. 

“What do you have to lose, then?” he asks. 

“Myself,” she says. 

“Isn't that what's happening now?” he asks. 

That's when she doesn't want outside world to exist. She plants her face against his chest, like she's been wanting for months and feels his hands on her arms and shoulders and around her body. He's solid and warm and familiar, and every bit of his presence is a comfort, but it's not enough. Not any more. She needs more. She wraps her arms around him, as hard as she can, to feel every breath and every movement and every line of his ribcage. Beneath it, his heart beating harder, faster, erratic. She drags her fingers down his back and feels his breath hitch. She does it again and feels his arms tighten, feels him start to grow hard against her. It's like shaking off the fog, something that finally pulls her outside of herself. She tugs at his shirt and reveals his back, feels him shiver when she drags her nails against his skin. He wants her. She needs to see it and parts from him enough to look at his face. His expression is a blatant and dark evidence and her blood runs warmer under her skin at the sight. 

She won't play it fair. He stares at her like she's the only thing in the world and that makes her breathing heavy with the power she still holds over him. When she drags his shirt up, he obediently lifts his hands and follows her she pulls him with her. The desk is sturdy, solid enough for her to sit on. His hips are narrow, sharp between her thighs and his body is firm, each muscle tight and coiled and tense. He shivers when she kisses his chest, moans when she drags her teeth across his skin. She finds scars there, scars too faded to notice unless from up close, and suddenly she wants to know and touch every one. She wants to know how his brokenness tastes, and he lets her. 

“Skye,” he breathes, holding her by the arms, but not stopping her. “Skye,” he repeats. 

“I want you,” she says. He falls into the kiss, lets her steal his air, pull against his hair and tug at his lips. Her shirt falls behind her, lost among the medical supplies and icer rounds. She breaks the kiss to watch him, see his reaction when her body comes into full view. He stares, not at the blue markings but at her breasts with such intense, open desire; but when he starts touching her blue marks, when he bends his head to lick the ugly bruise of rage it's her turn to shiver. 

Skye lets him pick her up and carry her to bed, pulls him above her because her skin feels too tight, because she's suddenly burning up; because she needs to break free. She tugs him down impatiently, wants to make him lose his mind and give in to her urgency, but he presses her down and slows the kiss, making her feel it instead of numbing her senses with him. It burns, it hurts, it feels like she's going to burst open, but he won't be swayed: he kisses her eyelids and her chin, and then slowly down her neck. 

“You're amazing,” he says, “you're gorgeous.” She holds her breath as he opens her jeans, drags them down her legs and bends her knee. He kisses the inside of her thigh and stops before he curls his fingers inside her underwear and then she sees him smile, _try_ to smile like he used to do _before_. 

“Yes,” she says, lifting her hips. 

He strips her naked, and in that moment she feels free, with no need to hide behind her hair, or pull her sleeves down her hands. She is like a map he travels with his fingers, and he is like a spiderweb of cuts, of old scars and faded pain that broke him but never defeated him. 

“Ward,” she says, “you too.” 

He stares at her kneeling between her legs; confused, flushed, beautiful. “Your clothes,” she says and pulls herself up to help him. It takes longer than it should because their hands are shaking, but then he's finally naked and above her and sinking his fingers into her. 

“Yes,” she says, “please, _please_ ,” because she doesn't want the teasing, she wants him, now, right now. And then he's there, careful not to crush her and not to hurt her when he enters her. She loops her arms under his shoulders, locks her legs around him, bites his shoulder when he starts to move. 

“Skye,” he says and kisses her, hard and long and sloppy and she breathes his name back to him, a calling, a recognition, a response. He was her friend and he broke her heart and stained his own hands so she wouldn't lose herself. He is a monster and a man and broken and somehow still whole; and she's hanging on to his every breath. If he can move then so can she, if he can look into his own darkness and not let it swallow him, than she can do it too. She kisses him back, needy and hungry, nearly desperate, holds him tight as he sends her body higher, holds onto him when the inevitable climb reaches its peak. 

“Skye,” he says, his sweaty, gorgeous face above her. “It's okay,” he says. “It's okay.”

And in that moment she trusts his voice because it still feels like the most natural thing to do, and lets herself fall. 

*

 _I am a monster_ he said. _I didn't choose to be one_. 

Skye's limbs are heavy and her breath is slow. Beneath her ear ward's heart beats, a steady pattern of safety. She wonders if two broken people can become one whole thing. She wonders if they can heal. 

Maybe nobody chooses to be a monster. Maybe it's what you choose to do with that monster. 

“What happened to you?” she asks, focusing on the feeling of his hand in her hair. She trails her finger along a thin and faded mark on his chest only to find another one not too far away. 

He takes a deep breath. It doesn't feel like she needs to explain what she's asking. 

“I set myself on fire,” he says. “Because I was told to,” she looks up at the sad sound of his voice. His face feels like the most familiar thing in the world, a sight she tried to hate but couldn't. Now she sees a light of hope. Her hand is draped across his chest and it seems like the blue tint on her skin is fading away. 

“And what happened?” she asks, even though she knows enough of his past. She knows what he meant when he said he survived. He pulls her and she goes, until her face is above his and he can cup her cheeks. 

“I couldn't burn up,” he says. “I never could.”


End file.
